Agents of Social Change: Celebrating Women's Progressive Activism across the Twentieth Century

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 218-221
Author(s):  
Kathleen Banks Nutter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Smith College ◽  
Conference Organizer ◽  
The Past ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
The Way

More than half a century ago, “No Documents, No History” was the rallying cry of women's historian and archivist Mary Ritter Beard. In that spirit, the Sophia Smith Collection (SSC) at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, sponsored a two-day conference from September 22–23, 2000, to celebrate the opening of eight collections that document the incredible achievement of six women and two organizations in the collective struggle for social change throughout the twentieth century. In the papers of Mary Metlay Kaufman, Dorothy Kenyon, Constance Baker Motley, Jessie Lloyd O'Connor, Frances Fox Piven, and Gloria Steinem, and in the records of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women and the Women's Action Alliance can be found primary documents associated with the ongoing quest for social justice. The potential impact of movement history based on such archival holdings is immense. As conference organizer Joyce Clark Follet noted in her opening remarks, such documentation can change the way we think about the past, thus changing the way we think about the future.

Literature as an Agent for Social Change: The Case of Caitlin Davies’s Place of Reeds and The Return of El Negro

Imbizo ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fetson Anderson Kalua
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Past ◽  
Natural Scientists

This article considers two of Caitlin Davies’s novels on Botswana, Place of Reeds and The Return of El Negro, as exemplifying the ways in which literature addresses issues of justice within the postcolonial context. A narrative which see-saws between history, journalism and anecdotal reporting, Place of Reeds exposes the underbelly of Botswana society, particularly with regard to the country’s mistreatment and marginalisation of its minorities and women. Paradoxically, El Negro is a story about an unidentified Southern African man whose body was clandestinely taken to Europe by natural scientists who put it on display, subjected it to scrutiny, and used it as a specimen for scientific research. In the years leading up to the end of the twentieth century, the body was brought back and buried in Botswana’s capital of Gaborone. What Caitlin Davies’s second text does is to lay bare the violence of colonialism. Using Homi Bhabha’s concept of a vernacular cosmopolitanism, a notion which he uses to suggest that global progress should be determined from the perspective of those people who have suffered all manner of injustices in the past, this article argues for and shows the extent to which Davies’s fiction bears witness to the role that literature plays in addressing issues of social justice in society.

Afterword

2021 ◽  
pp. 244-248
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Many ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Way

Gay rights and marriage equality have advanced so far in the U.S. in the past decade that it would be all too easy to assume that the struggle is over. The opponents of gay rights, however, remain powerful. Readers can take inspiration from how dramatically attitudes toward gay rights have liberalized in the past two decades and how transformative the liberalization of attitudes has been. We live in a world where political lies often seem to have the upper hand. It is worth remembering that despite the many short term advantages that lies can yield in politics, the truth has some long term advantages as well. The way the marriage equality movement prevailed should be a lesson to anyone who wants to make progressive social change.

The Making of an African Missionary Hero in the English Biographies of Apolo Kivebulaya (1923-1936)

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Wild-Wood
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Relative Neglect ◽  
Adventure Stories ◽  
The Way

AbstractApolo Kivebulaya was a well-respected Ganda priest who, beginning in the 1890s, established Anglican churches in Toro, Uganda, and in the Boga area of what is now Congo. A CMS colleague, A.B. Lloyd, wrote three popular biographies of Apolo for a British readership that inspired the writing of others. This article examines the style and content of Lloyd’s biographies and explores the factors that influenced them, including Keswick spirituality and boys’ adventure stories. It demonstrates early twentieth-century expectations of missionary heroism, and suggests that the way in which Apolo has been read in the past has influenced his relative neglect in the present.

Why History?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Way

What is the point of history? Why has the study of the past been so important for so long? Why History? A History contemplates two and a half thousand years of historianship to establish how very different thinkers in diverse contexts have conceived their activities, and to illustrate the purposes that their historical investigations have served. At the core of this work, whether it is addressing Herodotus, medieval religious exegesis, or twentieth-century cultural history, is the way that the present has been conceived to relate to the past. Alongside many changes in technique and philosophy, Donald Bloxham’s book reveals striking long-term continuities in justifications for the discipline. The volume has chapters on classical antiquity, early Christianity, the medieval world, the period spanning the Renaissance and the Reformation, the era of the Enlightenment, the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and developments down to the present. It concludes with a meditation on the point of history today.

Possibilities for new social work professional resistance in Chile: times of social change?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taly Reininger ◽  
Gianinna Muñoz-Arce ◽  
Cristobal Villalobos
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Exponential Growth ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global North ◽  
Material Conditions

In the current unscrupulous neoliberal climate, social workers are increasingly confronted with ethical and political tensions that clash with the profession’s commitments to human rights and social justice. However, despite neoliberalism’s global reach, the scholarship on social work professional resistance has been largely limited to the Global North. Taking into consideration this absence in the literature, this article seeks to explore the possibilities for professional resistance in the Global South, specifically, in Chile, a country in which neoliberalism was forcefully imposed and that has experienced an exponential growth in social movements over the past two decades. The following article explores the structural and material conditions that have historically shaped social work resistances, arguing that the current social and political climate, specifically, the constitutional process under way, presents a space from which new resistances are possible and necessary in order to challenge neoliberal hegemony.

British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century: An Emerging Ideological Tradition

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 549-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Fair ◽  
John A. Hutcheson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
National Party ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Will ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Way

Lord Acton, one of the most formidable intellects of the last century, was a master of transforming seemingly complicated or contradictory principles into concise epigrammatic statements. Attempting to reconcile Edmund Burke's many liberal views with his reputed Conservatism, Acton asked why was Burke “not an entire liberal? How thoroughly he wished for liberty—of conscience—property, trade, slavery, etc. What stood against it? His notion of history. The claims of the past. The authority of time. The will of the dead. Continuity.” One of the most important lessons to be derived from Burke's writings—recognized by countless authorities as the wellspring of modern British Conservatism—is that Conservatism is not so much a system of thought or ideology as it is a general inclination and regard for history. The behavior of the Conservative Party has been governed by precedent and pragmatism rather than by rationalism and idealism. Words such as dogma, program, or even policy have never been part of its lexicon, whereas such words as spirit, tradition, or even “way“ have more aptly described its approach to politics.By the twentieth century the Conservative Party's preference for lessons from the past (in accordance with England's common law tradition) to any scientifically derived formulas had gained for it the twin monikers of “the national party” and “the stupid party.” But Conservatism does not claim to possess the “keys or the Kingdom,” notes Ian Gilmour, an active politician and Conservative theoretician. “There is no certainty about the route and no certainty about the destination. As Burke said of himself, the lead has to be heaved every inch of the way.” Such is the way that modern British Conservatives, at least, have wished to perceive themselves.

scholarly journals Bharathi’s Concept of Women Liberation: Legacy and novelty

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalpana B ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Future Generation ◽  
Language Politics ◽  
Tamil Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Feminist Ideology ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

Subramania Bharathi is probably the greatest poet in the History of Tamil literature. Many books and articles have been written both in English and Tamil praising his works and criticizing him for the past hundred years. His works have been taken up for research, to analyze Nationalism, language, politics, literature, translation, philosophy, feminism and religion. This book entitled “Bharathi’s concept of women liberation: Legacy and novelty” analyzes his feminist thoughts and the lives of women during his period. The author of this book Dr. B. Kalpana carefully analyzes about Bharathi’s works, his period, tradition, his innovative and modern thoughts that paved the way to the future generation. In this book, Dr. B. Kalpana points out, how Bharathi overcame tradition, and became a revolutionary poet of the twentieth century. Bharathi’s feminist ideology is carefully analyzed in this book from the historical perspective.

The Lighthouse of the Mediterranean, 350 BC–100 BC

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Freshwater Lake ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Real Target ◽  
The Way

In 333 BC Alexander III, king of Macedon, whose claims to Greekness were treated with some scepticism down in Athens, wreaked vengeance on the Persian kings who had posed such a threat to Greece in past centuries, by defeating a massive Persian army at the battle of the Issos, beyond the Cilician Gates. Yet he did not pursue the Persian king, Darius III, into the Persian heartlands. He well understood the need to neutralize Persian power along the shores of the Mediterranean, and marched south through Syria and Palestine, where he ruthlessly took charge of the Phoenician cities that had in the past provided Persia with its fleets; Tyre resisted him for seven months, much to his fury, even after he built the great mole that for ever after joined the island city to the mainland. Once he had captured Tyre, most of its inhabitants were slaughtered, enslaved or crucified. He bypassed Jerusalem, choosing the road through Gaza, since his real target at this stage was Egypt, ruled by a Persian satrap for nearly 200 years, since the days of Cambyses, and his conquest of this land transformed not just Egypt but the entire eastern Mediterranean. The result of his victory was that Egypt was turned around, looking outwards to the Mediterranean rather than inwards to the Nile valley. In 331 BC he decided to found a city on the northernmost edge of Egypt, on a limestone spur separated from the alluvial lands of the interior by a freshwater lake – a city next to rather than actually in Egypt, as its designation in later Latin documents as Alexandria ad Aegyptum, ‘Alexandria on the way to [or ‘next to’] Egypt’, affirms. This sense that Alexandria was more a city of the Mediterranean than of Egypt would persist for over two millennia, until the expulsion of its foreign communities in the twentieth century. For much of that period it was the greatest city in the Mediterranean. Alexander’s motives certainly included his own glorification.

Mathematics, Multicultural Education, and Professional Development

1997 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 680-696
Author(s):  
Christine E. Sleeter
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Multicultural Education ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The Past ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Way

Multicultural education grew out of the civil rights movement and, as such, is grounded in a vision of democracy, social justice, pluralism, and equality—ideals that have yet to be realized in U.S. society and its schools. For the past 25 years, multicultural education has served as a mobilizing focus for struggles to articulate visions of schooling that are consistent with the ideals of the U.S. and for the development of theory and research that offer a countervision to the way that schooling is usually conducted, particularly for children from historically marginalized groups. As this body of theory and research has grown so also have the implications for restructuring various dimensions of the education enterprise. Mathematics is one such dimension and is the focus of this article. First, however, I contextualize the discussion that follows within a vision of what multicultural education means.

'Rouzing the Faculties to Act': William Blake, Merkabah Mysticism, the Theology of Liberation and the Exegetical Importance of Experience

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-554
Author(s):  
Christopher Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
William Blake ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

AbstractThis essay is a consideration of the importance of experience and the exegetical possibilities of the allusive nature of the biblical text. It explores the way in which the space was explored by mystics in their visionary experience. In this the interpretative subjects insert themselves into the text as active participants in that which the text describes, so that understanding of the text comes about through experiencing what happens when that imaginative process of identification with the subject matter of the text takes place. The final part of the essay reflects on the way in which, in the modern world, experience of life and the struggle for social justice have informed the way in which the text has functioned as a catalyst for interpretative insight and social change. In the theology of liberation there is a stress on the recognition of the events of one's life and the circumstances in which one lives as ingredients in the exegetical process, so that what one undergoes and learns thereby informs the understanding of the text. The essay is a plea that the widely canvassed view of exegesis which regards it as an exact interpretative science in which meaning can be pinned down by reference to ancient contexts needs to be complemented by a more experienced-based, more imaginative, form of exegesis. What unites these different appeals to experience in exegesis is the importance attached to the contribution of the interpreting subject to exegesis of the biblical text.

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